in other words
january18
2018
7
The Good Ol ’ Days
By Tobie Finzel
Other Vernonia Area Mills
While the Oregon-American
(O-A) Lumber Mill was the predomi-
nant employer and heart of the city’s
economy from 1922 to 1958, there were
numerous other lumber and shingle mills
that came and went over the course of
the town’s development in the latter de-
cades of the nineteenth century and well
into the twentieth.
Before that discussion, how-
ever, there was another anniversary, the
sixtieth, that we failed to note last month
while focused on the tenth anniversary
of the Flood of 2007. At noon on De-
cember 20, 1957, the O-A mill whistle
blew for the last time. By then, most of
the finished lumber had been sold and
shipped, and the majority of the work-
ers had been laid off. The whistle that
signaled the start and end of each day
as well as the start and end of the lunch
break was so familiar that people tended
not to notice it much until it went perma-
nently silent. A new era in Vernonia had
begun.
There were numerous small
lumber mills that flourished and faded
starting with the Brouse & Detrick Mill
in Pittsburg established in the late 1870s.
The first sawmill in Vernonia was built
in 1893 on a site near the present day
Banks-Vernonia Trail bridge over Rock
Creek. Owned by W. A. Harris, a Mr.
Ridgeway logged for the mill with a
team of oxen. Among the employees of
this mill were Newt Parker, Green Ad-
ams, Otto Malmsten, Charles Ichman
and R. Sessman. Sessman built the mill
and served as its millwright. In 1907
Otto Malmsten’s son Franklin decided
to build a sawmill with three of his four
brothers (Charles, Sidney and Elon) and
a Mr. Hurt. They called their business
“Vernonia Lumber and Fuel.” The site,
across the river from the north end of
Pebble Creek Road, would later be the
east end of the O-A mill pond. First Mr.
Hurt and then each brother successively
sold out his share until Franklin was the
remaining owner. In 1922 O-A pur-
chased the land from Franklin Malmsten
and twenty acres of the former pasture
west of the mill site was dug out to hold
water pumped from the Nehalem for its
mill pond, now Vernonia Lake.
One of the larger mills, Lindsay
Lumber, was established in March 1926
by Mr.’s. Lindsay, Bennett and Bear at
the west of Rose Avenue on the long
dormant site of what was called “The
Old Vernonia Mill.” This site was sold
in 1927 and the mill moved to Treharne,
possibly at the Nehalem River end of
Wilson Cutoff Road. The mill output
averaged 40,000 board feet of lumber
per day. Fifteen men worked in the
mill and twelve in the woods. Accord-
ing to a March 1930 Vernonia Eagle ar-
ticle, Lindsay Lumber secured a timber
holding near the Washington-Colum-
bia County line that held 10,000,000
board feet of timber. This temporarily
squelched the rumor that the mill was
going to move out. After a slowdown
during the Great Depression in the mid-
1930s, the mill resumed regular opera-
tions in 1935 but finally closed Vernonia
operations on April 12, 1940, when the
company moved to Springfield, Oregon.
While the O-A lands were rich
with Douglas fir, four percent of the tim-
ber was cedar and nine percent hemlock.
The cedar was valuable for shingle and
shake production, and O-A at first sold
its cedar on the open market. In 1925,
they leased a parcel on the eastern edge
of the mill pond and built the Johnston &
McGraw Shingle Mill. J&M converted
the cedar logs to shakes and shingles
at a rate of 15,000 board feet per day.
The shingle mill was idle from the early
1930s through 1934 (the O-A Mill was
similarly idle from 1933-1936) and re-
opened in February 1935. Shut down
by a strike for some months in 1935, it
burned down in 1936 and was never re-
built. The last carload of cedar products
shipped out in December of that year.
O-A returned to its practice of selling ce-
dar to independent mills until 1957.
Following the close of World
War II, demand for housing skyrocket-
ed. The boom lasted from 1947 to 1952.
The O-A owned lands were being de-
pleted, and the mill bought timber from
independent operators in and around the
Nehalem Valley. The cedar supply simi-
larly diminished so the sale of cedar logs
from the O-A pond became an important
source of revenue.
In the late 1940s, there were
seven shingle mills in the Upper Ne-
halem Valley, but the largest was the
Cedarwood Timber Company owned by
L. C. Cotner of Los Angeles. C. E. “Ed”
Miller had come to Vernonia in 1945
having worked in other shingle mills in
the northwest. He and his wife lived at
the Hy-Van Hotel (now the Ride Inn)
and took their meals at town restaurants,
especially Ma Vike’s Café. His wife
worked with him as a shingle packer.
In 1949, he purchased Cedarwood from
Cotner, and the couple moved to a house
near the mill that was located just west
of Rose Avenue on what is now Maple
Street. At the peak of his business, Ed
ran three shifts a day with ten men per
crew. In 1950, daily output was 50
squares of shingles and 8 squares of
shakes. Cedarwood was a steady outlet
for O-A logs with its own log pond along
a short spur line of the railroad. Logs
were sent by train from the O-A pond to
Miller’s pond. The company’s shakes
and shingles were shipped by truck and
rail to points all over the United States.
By 1966 Cedarwood was the
only remaining cedar mill in Columbia
County. In 1981, Miller sold the mill
to the Strassel brothers and moved the
heavy equipment to their site on Stras-
sel Road, just off Highway 26. Ed con-
tinued for a time with a crew of three
making hand-split shakes. Many local
residents who worked there still share
stories of that mill, Ed Miller and the
others who worked there. Some per-
manently bear the reminders of the dan-
gerous work with missing or shortened
fingers. John Cunnick, the original Tim-
berbound composer who lived at Keasey
in the 1970s and befriended many who
worked in the woods and mills, wrote a
song, “Cedar Mill Boys” that captures
that profession: “Got all my fingers, ex-
cept for three.” For an in-depth article
on shingle mill work, see the memoir of
the Crowder Shingle Mill in Birkenfeld
at http://www.crowder.org/voices/shin-
gles.htm\
From Virgil Powell’s Diary
Virgil Powell (1887-1963) was
a long-time resident whose family had a
farm in the Upper Nehalem Valley be-
tween Natal and Pittsburg. Each year
from 1906 until 1955, he kept a regular
diary of his activities. One of the many
jobs Virgil held over his lifetime was as
a fireman at shingle mills and the O-A
mill. The main duty of the fireman was
to tend the fire and keep its associated
steam-generating boiler going, but he
also served as a free hand who tended
to everything else that needed doing in
smaller mills. Before that, however, he
helped build the Johnston & McGraw
Shingle Mill in 1925 and later worked
there.
Monday,
July
27,
1925:
Commenced working on shingle
mill. Awful hot all day.
Tuesday, July 28: Worked at
building shingle mill. Awful
hot all day.
Thursday, July 30: Put rafters
up on shingle mill. Awful hot.
Friday, August 7: Worked on
shingle mill all day. Hot &
smoky. Brown’s house burned
9 P.M.
Tuesday, November 6, 1928:
Tallied at shingle mill. Pretty
fine day. Over town voted 6
P.M.
Wednesday, November 14:
Loaded shingles most of day.
Pretty fair day. Over to Bert
Nelsons evening.
Wednesday, November 21:
Loaded shingles till 1:30 P.M.
Over town to my lots afternoon.
Very fine day.
Wednesday, November 28:
Loaded shingles forenoon.
Dug out new well afternoon.
Very good day.
Monday, February 17: Fired
(i.e. was the fireman) at shingle
mill 6 to 2 P.M. Up to Lods 3
P.M. Very fine day.
The Vernonia Pioneer Museum is located
at 511 E. Bridge Street and is open from
1 to 4 pm on Saturdays and Sundays (ex-
cluding holidays) all year. From June
through mid-September, the museum is
also open on Fridays from 1 to 4 pm.
There is no charge for admission but do-
nations are always welcome. Become
a member of the museum for an annual
$5 fee to receive the periodic newsletter.
We now have a page on the Vernonia
Hands on Art website, www.vernonia-
handsonart.org If you are a Facebook
user, check out the Vernonia Pioneer
Museum page. The museum volunteers
are always pleased to enlist additional
volunteers to help hold the museum open
and assist in other ways. Please stop by
and let one of the volunteers know of
your interest in helping out.
TOO BUSY?
Call your LOCAL bookkeeper
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on tax return preparers, go to www.IRS.gov.
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